Essential Reading

by
Alan Palmer

HISTORY

2007

PAPER

448 PAGES

CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE

Palmer chronicles the Baltic region from the Viking era and Byzantine Empire through wars, uprisings and other political conflicts of the 20th century and on to modern times, where he finds a group of nations poised to emerge as some of Europe's most vital democracies. In addition to the prolific British historian's considerable learning, he provides some rather entertaining anecdotes. (BLT22, $19.95)

by
Anne Vipond

GUIDEBOOK

2010

PAPER

368 PAGES

This excellent guide to cruises and ports from Scandinavia and the Baltic to the British Isles, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin includes city maps, excursions, color photographs and a pull-out map of Northern Europe. (EUR364, $21.95)

by
Lonely Planet Publications

by
Andrejs Plakans

HISTORY

2011

PAPER

472 PAGES

Plakans traces the history of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from ninth-century tribal beginnings to the present status as three thriving and separate nation states, focusing particularly on the region's complex 20th-century history, culminating in the reestablishment of national sovereignty. (BLT50, $29.99)

by
Timothy Snyder

HISTORY

2012

PAPER

524 PAGES

The prize-winning Yale historian recasts the chilling history of modern Europe around its central catastrophe: the 14 million people killed by totalitarian regimes in the lands between Hitler and Stalin between 1933 and 1945, covering Germany and the Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, the Baltics and western Russia. (EUR399, $19.99)

by
Suzanne Massie

HISTORY

1995

PAPER

496 PAGES

HARD TO FIND ELSEWHERE

Massie traces both minuscule details and larger movements in pre-revolutionary Russian art, literature and daily life in this affectionate overview of 19th-century palaces, courts and culture. (RUS21, $35.00)

by
Birgit and Peter Sawyer

HISTORY

1993

PAPER

265 PAGES

Experts in the Viking Age and a Nordic medievalist respectively, Peter and Birgit Sawyer trace the history of Scandinavia and the Baltic from the Viking Age to the early 16th century in meticulous, scholarly detail. (SCN79, $24.00)

by
John Haywood

HISTORY

1995

PAPER

144 PAGES

The history of the Vikings told through a series of innovative maps and excellent photographs. This book traces the routes of the ninth-century Viking merchants and explorers throughout Europe and onto the New World. (VIK02, $22.00)

by
W. Bruce Lincoln

HISTORY

2002

PAPER

432 PAGES

A wonderfully written, informative portrait of St. Petersburg, focusing on the city's development in the 18th and 19th centuries as Russia's "window on the West." Highly recommended for travelers with an interest in the character and significance of the city and its monuments. (RUS128, $19.95)

by
David Nicolle

HISTORY

2007

PAPER

64 PAGES

This slim history of the Teutonic Knights (1190-1561) includes an excellent overview of towers, castles and settlements from this period scattered throughout the Baltic. With paintings of the knights and their daily life in the region. (BLT39, $18.95)

by
Michael North

HISTORY

2015

HARD COVER

380 PAGES

COMING IN APRIL

In his erudite history of the "Nordic Mediterranean," North covers over 1,000 years of trade, politics, architecture, cultural exchange and conflict in the Baltic. His main point: the Baltic's coastal nations have always been an interconnected economic unit. (BLT59, $39.95)

by
Colin Thubron

TRAVEL NARRATIVE

2001

PAPER

224 PAGES

The marvelous account of a 10,000-mile journey by car from St. Petersburg and the Baltic States south to Georgia and Armenia in 1981. A gifted writer and intrepid traveler, Thubron grapples with the complexities of Russian identity in this lyrical book. (RUS106, $14.00)

by
Robert K. Massie

BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR

2012

PAPER

625 PAGES

Eager readers of Massie's Nicholas and Alexandria or the Pulitzer Prize-winning Peter the Great will not be disappointed by this latest, an old-fashioned tale of politics, power and 18th-century Europe, drawing effectively from the ambitious Catherine's own memoirs. (RUS470, $20.00)

by
Vladimir Nabokov

BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR

1989

PAPER

316 PAGES

Nabokov's richly imagined memoir wonderfully evokes cultural life among the well-to-do in turn-of-the-century St. Petersburg. Nabokov called his childhood home, now a museum off St Isaac's Square, "the only house in the world." (RUS28, $16.00)

by
Pers Anders Fogelstrom

LITERATURE

2000

PAPER

332 PAGES

HARD TO FIND ELSEWHERE

Young Henning Nilsson arrives in Stockholm on the eve of the Industrial Revolution, eager for success, love and a fully experienced life in this Swedish classic of historical realist fiction, happily now available in an English translation. (SWE22, $21.95)

by
Boris Akunin
|
Andrew Bromfield

LITERATURE

2004

PAPER

249 PAGES

Akunin sets a suspected murder among the glitterati of late 19th-century Moscow in this first book in the series of clever detective novels starring the rascal Erast Fandorin, wildly popular in Russia. (RUS210, $15.00)

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